This is a documentary about the women in North Caucasus – an interesting region, which recently had become a target for Bulgarian nationalist sentiments. The current situation is looked at through the prism of the past and the position of women in pre-Muslim and Muslim culture, with a very little reflection on the Soviet epoch. The author of the film, and the women in it, pose the question to what extent the contemporary discriminative patriarchal culture and the violence in it are not a result of the globalization of the methods of suppression of women. The film includes conversations with women from Chechnya, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan and are an attempt to look at the problem of gender violence not only from the point of view of struggle for dominance, but as a result of systemic, multilayered and interconnected technique for suppression in which families, religious and national communities as well take part in the processes of globalization of the entire world.

The film was commissioned by Heinrich Böll Foundation in 2014.

PRECARIOUS UNION (2013) (17.19 min) by Shifra Kazhdan (Russia)

This two channel video is a new reading of the classical Pushkin text “Boris Godunov.” The artist has chosen specifically the scene of the meeting between the False Dmitriy I and princess Marina Mniszech, before their marriage in the 17th century, after which she became a Russian Tsaritsa (Queen). Traditionally this scene has been interpreted as a demonstration of Marina’s careerism, and her desire to get the power at any price. Kazhdan reads this text as a rape scene. It is important for Kazhdan to show the violence from the point of view of the woman not only historically, but from our contemporary point of view as well. The victim is most often blamed for the violence perpetrated against her. One of the methods nowadays is to not talk about the violence, and historically it is to re-write the history from the point of view of the victorious rapist. In this case, however, the artist is not trying to discover the historical truth, but to present a narrative different from the commonly accepted one: the possible woman’s narrative. The scene is reenacted by two men, who are making symbolic gestures for the camera, which adds an element of empathy – a physical attempt to get into somebody else’s skin, a person with different gender and sexual identity.

TOP SECRET (12.56 min) Performance-reading by Parsifal Marin and Stanimir Panayotov (Bulgaria), with the video “The Multiple Time of Clinique” by Shifra Kazhdan (Russia)

What are the secret teachings of the world's top men?

How top can they get?

How do other people, and the people, praise them?

Come to queerly unravel the secrets! You will hear popular poems devoted to Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Boyko Borissov, read and interpreted by Bulgaria's foremost velvet mafia.

This performance is accompanied by the 12 min video by Shifra Kazhdan called “The Multiple Time of Clinique”, meant to serve as background to other people’s events and ideas.

The poems will be read in their original languages: Bulgarian, Russian and English.

FILMS THAT HURT FEELINGS (2000) by Carey Burtt (USA)

City of Feelings (19.30 min)

Hey, Mister! You're in the Girls Room! (4.19 min)

The Death of Sex (4.15 min)

The Psychotic Odyssey of Richard Chase (6.14 min)

Mind Control Made Easy, or How to Become a Cult Leader (12.44 min)

The Dissociative Disorder Movie (18.09 min)

Sun of God (4.27 min)

The Psychotic Odyssey of Richard Chase and The Death of Sex are both featured in the second edition of Jack Sargeant's book Deathtripping: The Cinema of Transgression. Psychotic Odyssey is distributed by the cult production company Troma Entertainment in its “Best of Tromadance Vol. 1” DVD. It was also featured in the Other Cinema’s Experiments in Terror video exhibition. Mind Control Made Easy, or How to Become a Cult Leader was featured in the 2005 Hell on Reels: Astoria Moving Image Festival and enjoyed audience praise. An instructional film outlining the techniques used by destructive cults, Mind Control was also featured on Supersphere.com where it received an audience award. Fragments from Mind Control have been used by Flying Lotus' alter ego Captain Murphy on the album Duality, released in 2012.

BIOGRAPHIES

Kseniia Khrabrykh (Russia)

Krabrykh graduated in Interactive Media Directing from Saint Petersburg State Institute of Film and Television. She is the two-time winner of the Scholarship of the President of the Russian Federation for young researchers and post-graduate students who conduct advanced scientific research and developments in the priority directions of the modernization of the Russian economy: in 2011 and 2012, and was also Best Graduate of the Faculty of Creative Screen Professions in 2012. She closely cooperates with the International Institute of Photography and Cinema (MIFIK) and Profotik School of Photography, where she is teaching. As a film director and media-artist, Khrabrykh provides consulting services in the field of interactive media production.

Shifra Kazhdan (Russia)

Kazhdan is an artist that became famous in the 1990s with her performative work on and with paper clothing. Later on she began working with video for her installations, and in 2008 releases her first full feature movie. She has shown her work in exhibitions such as Modernikon (Turin, Italy), Auditorium Moscow (a Moscow-based project by the Warsaw museum for contemporary art). Here solo shows have been realized in the Moscow museum of contemporary arts, Center for contemporary art FUTURA (Prague), GMG Gallery and ArtStrelka (Moscow). Kazhdan is an artist reflecting on gender divisions in society, and in her work combines a deep philosophical approach with an interest in classical works. In trying to deploy contemporary problems in historical circumstances, Kazhdan also foregrounds old texts anew.

Carey Burtt (USA)

Burtt is an American underground filmmaker based in New York City. He has mostly made short films that use humor while examining taboo subject matter. However, he has co-directed one feature-length film, A Forked World. Although he has made films about extreme subjects since the late 1970s in NYC, his work is not officially associated with the Cinema of Transgression, but has been considered as progressing the movement's legacy. Burtt is also a musician and has played in bands such as Carey's Problem and Gigi's Disco Rock, and has collaborated on music with the artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel.